


You've Got Time

by SpicyReyes



Category: Left 4 Dead (Video Games)
Genre: Former cellmates au, M/M, This Is Michelle's Fault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-01-06 09:07:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12208140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpicyReyes/pseuds/SpicyReyes
Summary: Cellmates Nick and Francis realize that their guards aren't coming around one day - only to find out that's because they've been eaten by goddamn zombies.Surprisingly, things godownhillfrom there.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One day a while back I saw a writing prompt like "prisoners escape to find an apocalypse happened while they were in jail" and was like...Francis and Nick though.  
> This happened.  
> That's about all I have to serve as an excuse.  
> First chapter is tiny to serve as just a sort of prologue. Godspeed, my friends.

“You smell like a fucking grandpa.”

Nick rolled his eyes and tensed the muscles in his arms, pulling himself up a little more and dropping down again, trying to spur Francis into actual movement. “So don’t smell me. Just fuck me.”

“I can’t shut off my nose, man,” Francis said, but nonetheless spun them around so he had Nick pinned to the wall rather than hanging entirely off his waist and shoulders. “I can’t believe you pay six bucks for that shit.”

“What the fuck else am I supposed to buy?” Nick bit back. “Certainly not lotion, since it seems it’s gonna take us forever to get through one bottle, at the speed you’re fuckin’ moving.”

Francis huffed, and moved faster, driving into Nick until the other man was moaning instead of complaining. 

Which, honestly, was a feat - both Nick and Francis were loathe to stop complaining at any time. 

Nick’s head fell back against the wall when his orgasm hit, dragging Francis with him, and they stayed together for only a moment before Francis was setting Nick back down and sliding out of him. 

Nick stretched, lazily, freeing up the night’s knots along his spine. “I gotta flip my mattress,” he muttered, as a twinge shot through his shoulder. “It’s getting even shittier.”

“Well, it has to hold your fat ass every night,” Francis said. “Of course it’s getting wrecked.”

Nick flipped off his cellmate, before starting to dress himself, figuring walking around even his own cell naked was just asking to start shit. The guards pretty much ignored everything he and Francis got up to, so long as it kept them both out of trouble, but plausible deniability would only go so far. 

The two men had been cellmates for a while - probably nearing a year, if Nick bothered to think back. They’d both been notoriously shitty roommates, and so the guards had shoved them together in sort of a last-ditch effort to get them somewhere they weren’t going to drive someone insane or get somebody killed. 

It helped that their (main) crimes were fairly in-line with each other’s, both being Class B felonies: Francis was a year and a half into a six year sentence for first-degree manslaughter, and Nick was just shy of two years into his  _ own  _ six years for first-degree assault. 

The fact that they hadn’t killed each other was less about actually getting along and more about convenience - they were both antisocial quiet types with a tendency towards sarcasm, so their time spent in their cell together had been unobjectionable for the first month or so.

Then they started having sex, and both of them quit even  _ pretending _ they weren’t liking the arrangement. Nick referred to it as ‘making do’ and Francis would always deflect it as Nick’s idea, but the reasoning didn’t really matter.

The whole thing boiled down to the fact that, at the end of the day, two hardcore loners with just a touch of contact starvation found that the easiest place to find human contact was, in fact, the  _ only _ option. 

“God, I’m starving,” Francis complained. “I’m gonna end up buying like fifty bucks of commissary food.”

“And you make fun of me buying hair gel?”

Francis glared at him. “Hair gel’s a stupid thing to buy. Who cares about that goop when you could have  _ food?  _ Do you know how many Oreos you can buy for the price of that shitty tube of grease?”

Nick pointed a warning finger at his cellmate. “Do  _ not  _ fucking come back here with Oreos. You eat like a goddamn animal and then the floor is covered in crumbs.” 

“I didn’t say I was gonna, asshole,” Francis snapped. “But I might now! Watch me. I’ll come back in here with a hoard of cookies and crush them all up over your shitty mattress.”

“I’m buying a comb shiv off of one of the tweekers,” Nick said. “ _ Clearly _ you need to be cut down.”

“We’re not buying shit standing around,” Francis said. “What fuckin’ time is it? Sun’s comin’ in from the window, boys, who wants to let us walk down to the comm?” 

Nick frowned, because Francis had a point: no one had come by to open the door.

“Did we scare you off?” Francis yelled out. “Come on, a little peep show never hurt nobody!”

“Francis,” Nick warned. “Shut the fuck up.”

“What?”

“ _ Listen.” _

Francis shut up, and after a moment of tense silence, his eyes widened, showing Nick that he’d heard it too. 

Gunshots. Faint, almost inaudible, but  _ gunshots.  _

“Lockdown,” Francis said. “We’ve gotta be on lockdown for this. There aren’t even that many armed guards around here, and the ones I’ve seen are nowhere near twitchy enough to pull the trigger that many times for one freak. A riot, maybe…?”

Nick held up a hand, stopping Francis’ musing, listening to the sound of fast-approaching footsteps.

A moment later, a haggard-looking guard skid to a stop in front of their cell, shoving a key into the lock with shaking hands. “Get moving,” he breathed out. “We’re evacuating the prison. They declared a state of emergency. CEDA-...”

He never got to finish whatever warning he was trying to give. There was a hacking noise, utterly brutal, and then he was suddenly flung back.

No,  _ pulled -  _ Nick could see something greyish pink wrapped tight around the guard’s chest, dragging him down the hall to the sound of screams.

“What the  _ fuck?”  _ he muttured. “Am I on drugs?”

“If you are, you were sure generous with ‘em,” Francis said. “Cause I saw that shit, too.”

The biker stepped forward, hooking his arm through the cell door to catch and turn the key in the lock, letting the door open. 

“Only one way to find out what that shit is,” he said. “And that’s to go check on it.”

He reached out, patting Nick’s shoulder once, before shoving him in the direction the guard had been dragged in. 

“After you, princess.”

Nick turned to stare at him, incredulous. “Uh,  _ no.  _ I’m staying the hell away from...whatever  _ that _ was, thanks.”

“Don’t be a wuss,” Francis said, hooking an arm around his shoulders and dragging him along as he walked through the hall of cells. “The big bad tentacle monster won’t hurt you with Papa Francis here to watch your back.”

“Somehow, I’m feeling  _ less  _ safe.”

“Good! Shows you’re learning.” 

Nick was saved a retort by the sound of groaning, and he turned to look at its source, heart immediately jumping to his throat.

What he saw was... _ disturbing,  _ to put it mildly. 

The prison guard from earlier was laying on his back, wrapped up in that creepy vine-thing, with his throat torn out and his eyes staring up lifelessly. Hands were tearing chunks out of his skin, and Nick followed their movements to their source: what looked  _ almost  _ like a man, only decayed, skin falling in loose and torn chunks along one side and the rest discolored and sickly grey. The ‘tentacle’, as Francis had dubbed it, turned out to actually be a  _ tongue,  _ spilling out of the creature’s mouth and coiling around his captured prey.

“Francis,” Nick muttered, as quietly as he possibly could. “We need to get the  _ fuck _ out of here,  _ right now. _ ” 

The arm around his shoulders dropped off, a hand wrapping around his elbow instead, dragging him forward.

In an instant, they were running, darting through familiar hallways, looking for...Well,  _ anything.  _

It was deserted, and Nick thought that was the most disturbing thing, right up until they found where they’d all went.

The yard.

Nick had to scramble to cover Francis’ mouth before the man could yell out, glaring at him. 

“Don’t make  _ any  _ noise,” he hissed. “Whatever those fucking things are, I don’t want them after us.”

_ Those things  _ referred to the crowd of creatures stumbling around the prison yard, occasionally tripping over the corpses that they’d scattered across the grounds. Each of them was as decayed and vile as the one from the hall, if missing the freakish tongue, and a few were even crouched next to the dead bodies, tearing out chunks in the same manner the tongue one had. 

As Nick watched, one of the creatures took off a strip of skin, peeling it off like a bandaid, and then  _ ate it,  _ chewing in circles like it didn’t know how to work its own jaw. 

His hand fell from Francis’ mouth, allowing the man to utter his own observation: “They’re fucking  _ zombies.”  _

“What the fuck did they give us?” Nick said. “This can’t be real. Right?”

One of the creatures closest to them looked over, sniffing the air, reminding Nick of a hunting dog.

“Fuck,” he said, pushing Francis back into the building and slamming the door behind him. “ _ Run.  _ We need to get  _ out _ , right the fuck now.” 

Unsurprisingly, Francis didn’t hesitate.


	2. Chapter 2

Breaking out of prison during an attack by zombies was, oddly enough, less ‘breaking’ and more a casual stroll out the door. 

Sure, every door in the prison auto-locked when shut, but they were all pretty well propped open with the  _ excessive corpses  _ that had fallen into them, marking the fate of the first wave of people to try an escape. 

“No wonder they all went to the yard,” Nick mused, nudging a guard’s body with his foot. “They probably started off fighting down here, and moved that way when all the warm bodies left were in one place.”

“Not all of ‘em,” Francis said. “I’m still here.” At Nick’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated, “You said  _ warm _ bodies. Your cold little heart can’t count.”

Nick flipped him off. “Just my luck, the fucking world is ending and I’m stuck with  _ you.”  _

“We can split up when we’re free men, if it makes you feel better.” 

It  _ didn’t,  _ because Nick really didn’t know how well being on his own would go as a technically escaped prisoner in what could very well be a zombie apocalypse. He wasn’t going to  _ say that,  _ though, so he just made a show of rolling his eyes and leaving, pushing his way out the front door of the prison - the only one he’d had to actually  _ open,  _ even if the key was already in the lock, its former owner having been only a moment away from safety. 

Or, maybe not  _ safety. _

If anything, the street was  _ worse:  _ cars in the parking lot were all jammed into a cluster by the road out, where they had all been clamoring to get out fast. They were all abandoned, as well, and Nick could see cracked and broken windows and blood splatters anywhere he looked.

More than that, more than anything, there were the zombies.

All around the cars, there were bodies, some on the pavement and others in various stages of removal from their vehicles (some half-hanging out a window, others caught in their doors, one particular person who was on top of his car). All the bodies were serving as meals to the handful of the actual monster-humans sitting around, seemingly unbothered by Nick and Francis.

“They don’t see us,” Nick muttered to his partner. “So let’s do ourselves a favor and get the  _ fuck  _ out of here before they do.”

He didn’t have to say it twice - Francis was just as much of a stubborn smartass as Nick, but he was also a criminal with a history of gang involvement and violence. He knew when to keep his mouth shut and move.

  
  
  
  


The signs started about half a mile down the road, the second they hit Atlanta city limits. Large, orange, backlit signs proclaiming EVAC AT VANNAH HOTEL. 

Nick and Francis didn't have to exchange more than a single look before they were following the arrows. They were prisoners, sure, but survival was a bit more important than getting a shorter sentence. 

Well, Francis was of that opinion, anyway. Nick…

“We should stop somewhere,” Nick said. “Get some fucking normal clothes. I don't want to roll into an evacuation in a prison jumpsuit.”

“If you wanna break through a crowd of actual flesh eating monsters, go ahead,” Francis said. “I'm totally fine sticking to orange, if only cause it makes this a little less like an actual breakout. I was finally getting good behavior, you know. You are gonna get me stuck with you longer.”

“Its part of my master plan,” Nick drawled, tone utterly dry. “I'm trapping you with the law since I can't just poke holes in your condoms.”

“...Uh, gross,” Francis muttered. “I should not have pictured that.”

Nick figured he didn't want to know what exactly Francis had pictured, because there was really no place to go from that statement that  _ wasn't  _ disgusting. 

The hotel was slowly creeping into view in the distance, over the top of a city skyline painted with smoke and coated in the scent of decay. 

“Man,” Francis said, letting out a whistle. “ _ Fuck  _ Atlanta.”

“Something  _ did _ .” Nick reached out and hit the back of his hand against Francis’ arm, gesturing off the side of the road they were on. “Thrift store over there has a broken door. Bet you we can get clothes without being noticed.”

“You know why there's nobody in the thrift store, Nick?” Francis asked, before stopping in the middle of the street and gesturing wildly toward the Vannah Hotel. “Because there's an evac! Getting people away from  _ actual goddamn zombies.  _ Shit, I hate prison, but this is not the time to give the finger to the state.”

“Its  _ exactly  _ the time,” Nick argued, already heading toward the store. “No one will expect it.”

“I hate you,” Francis told him, even as he quickly caught up to Nick and followed alongside him. “I hate the warden that thought it was a good idea to room me with you. I hate the lawyers and the judges that sentenced me. I hate everyone who ever got me to this point, their family, and Nurse Cath.” At Nick’s raised eyebrow, Francis explained, “She’s the one who keeps giving me condoms.”

Nick made a mental note that if it ever came to running away from a mob of zombies, Francis could be the distraction, and pushed open the loose hanging door to the thrift shop. 

There was a dead body in the middle of the room, twisted and disfigured like the creatures hobbling around outside, and Nick took a moment to examine it closely. 

“That's fucked up,” Francis said. “I've seen some gross shit, but this beats it all. I've officially seen Hell, and it looks like this ugly motherfucker.”

Nick ignored him and headed to the racks of clothes to look for something his size. 

He picked through racks of old shirts and gross sweaters and tattered jeans, idly keeping an ear out for Francis’ occasional shout out announcing the former biker had found something interesting. 

It wasn't long before Francis was in a fresh outfit, and poked his head into the dressing room Nick had appropriated to show off his new look.

“I found a vest,” Francis told him. “I love it.” 

“Good for you,” Nick muttered, fighting with the slightly loose button on the front of the suit jacket he'd found. 

Francis eyed him up and down, taking note of the white suit. “Are we getting married or something? Do I have to get you a ri- oof!” 

Nick dropped his fist from his punch to Francis’ stomach, pointing a threatening finger at him in its place. “I’m not your fucking  _ wife,  _ asshole.” He headed out of the dressing room, headed for the streets. “Come on. We can probably hit the evac now and not get immediately shot down as escaped cons.”

Francis rolled his eyes, but followed. He really didn't have any choice - Atlanta was on fire. There was nowhere else  _ to _ go. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The Hotel was deserted when they arrived. 

“If we’re late, I will  _ actually  _ kill you,” Francis warned. “Feed you to the fucking zombies.”

“Maybe don’t joke about the things that are rotting alive and  _ eating people  _ in the streets,” Nick suggested. “Sign here says the evac is on the roof. They're all probably upstairs.”

“You think?”

Nick jumped, which would have made Francis laugh if he weren't so readily on guard at a new person speaking. 

Beside them, a young woman had appeared, looking wide-eyed and slightly terrified as she took in the two men before her. 

“...I should hope so,” Nick said, as he finally processed the question. “If not, we’re beyond fucked. Whatever those things are, I don't want to be stranded in this hellhole with them.” He reached up, tugging on his collar, pulling it away from his throat as he avoided eye contact. “Bad enough when it was just the fucking hicks,” he muttered, mainly to himself. 

The woman frowned. “I’m Rochelle,” she introduced. “You guys mind if I stick with you on the way up? I don't really think being alone around these things is a great idea.”

“I'm always up for a pretty lady’s company,” Francis said. “I'm Francis. This is my wife.”

Nick swung a fist out to punch Francis in the shoulder, but the biker sidestepped it, laughing all the while. 

“Let's get fucking moving,” Nick muttered. “We don’t need to bond to ride a goddamn elevator.”

As the gambler stalked off toward the elevator, Rochelle turned to look up at Francis. 

“Is he...alright?”

“Who, Nick?” Francis said. “Not even a little. He's a time bomb on a good day. He grows on you, but...like mold.”

Rochelle eyed Nick’s rapidly retreating back, warily assessing who she'd stumbled into. 

Francis clapped his hands together, grinning and calling out to Nick. “If there's a chopper, I call shotgun!”

“That's not-...”

Rochelle watched the man jog up to his partner, the two rapidly dissolving into an argument that seemed rather heavily one-sided and long-suffering, and wondered if perhaps being alone would have been a better bet after all. 

  
  
  
  


There were two people already in the elevator when they reached it: a large middle-aged man and a younger man in  _ actual overalls.  _

Nick hated Georgia.

“Oh, hey!” the kid greeted, honestly  _ grinning  _ at them. “This is crazy, huh?  _ Zombies,  _ man.”

“Fucking thrilling.” Nick dropped his weight against the corner of the elevator, folding his arms and fixing the other four with a glare. 

“Uh,” the boy hesitated for a second, thrown by the antagonistic behavior. 

“Um, hi,” Rochelle said, trying to rescue the situation. “I’m Rochelle.”

“Ellis!” he returned immediately. “This is Coach.”

Rochelle looked to ‘Coach,’ who shrugged. “Everyone just calls me that, ‘round here.”

Three sets of eyes looked to the men lingering in the corner of the elevator, and Francis gave a small, sarcastic wave. “Francis,” he said, gesturing to himself, and then toward his (former?) cellmate. “Nick.”

The elevator saved them with a cheerful  _ ding _ , the doors sliding open. 

“Thank Christ,” Nick spat immediately, all but sprinting out the door. He hadn’t been stuck that close to people in a long while, and he was quickly remembering how much he  _ hated  _ people. 

They moved quickly, as a unit, toward the flight of stairs leading up to the roof, and rushed up it together. 

What they found was...not great.

“What the  _ fuck,”  _ Nick swore, running across the roof to grip at the concrete edge. “What the  _ fuck?”  _

“Where are they going?!” Rochelle cried, as the helicopters slowly faded in the distance. “Come back! We’re still here!”

Coach and Ellis joined in the cries, all three waving frantically, while Nick dropped down to the ledge and rested his head in his hands. 

“Okay,” he spat out. “Helicopters don’t come back when you yell at them. Now we know that. What the  _ fuck  _ do we do now?”

Francis looked around, taking note of the scattered signs of the evac. Signs were halfway torn down, likely broken through in a panic by the crowds, and there were a few random personal belongings dropped along the way - a broken necklace, a wallet, a stuffed animal he  _ really _ didn’t want to think about - showing the frenzy the people had been in. 

Against the wall by the staircase, he saw a bit of hope: a supply table, sectioned off by caution tape and containing several random items, each in some way deadly.

“I think they were confiscating weapons,” Francis called out, heading toward the table. “Look at this. Holy shit, they have guns here. I love rednecks.”

The other four slowly moved to join him, Nick immediately reaching out to snatch up a Magnum. “...Are we fighting our way outta this place, then?”

“I’m okay with it,” Francis said, and scooped up a fire axe just for the fun of it. He eyed the pistol in Nick’s hands warily. “Your aim any good?”

“Test me and find out,” Nick returned, checking the gun for ammo and taking a moment to find and collect the box of bullets that had most likely been brought along with it. “They have to have some documentation somewhere. Let’s see if we can’t figure out where the next evac is.”

Nick turned to head to the staircase, pausing when he saw four people watching him. 

Francis, he’d expected - the man was probably not going to leave him alone until they were safely out of the line of fire - but the other three were random strangers. Why they were defaulting to him, he had no idea. 

“What?” he barked at them. “Would you rather camp up here and wait for the lovely government assholes to turn around and come back? Be my guest. Less of you to put up with.”

Rochelle frowned at him, and then stalked past him, scooping up a baseball bat off the table. “Fine. We’re going down the hard way, then.”

Ellis let out a whistle, like the prospect of risking his life against flesh-eating monsters was  _ exciting,  _ and picked up a shotgun off the table. “Man, this is a bolt-action. That’s gonna suck if we get slammed, but I guess whoever brought it just hunted deer or somethin’. Still, should kill a zombie.”

Coach picked up a rifle, not making any commentary, only looking grimly resigned to the bloodbath ahead.

“Great,” Nick breathed. “Now I have  _ four  _ of you to babysit. Awesome.”

Francis shoulder-checked Nick as he walked by him, making the gambler stumble to the side. “Babysit, my ass. Watch and learn, dickolas.” 

Without so much as a pause for a response, Francis swung the fireaxe full-force at the handle of the door, breaking it clean off before kicking the door open. 

“It was already fucking unlocked,” Nick told him.

“Just testing,” Francis replied easily, before rushing down the staircase again.

The hallway between the elevator and stairs had been empty, before, but their shouting must have drawn attention: several of the creatures were slowly hobbling out of rooms with broken or open doors, and the scrambling of others could be heard behind closed ones. 

Francis swung the fire axe at the first one he came upon, hacking the side of its neck open. It didn’t decapitate cleanly, just sent the zombie to the ground gurgling and twitching, and Nick heard Rochelle mutter a  _ ‘Sweet Jesus’  _ behind him. 

Nick clicked the safety off of the Magnum, and brought it up, getting ready to fire if needed.

_ Let the bloodbath begin.  _

He never thought he’d  _ miss  _ prison.


End file.
